Category Archives: Business

Yep that’s right. I’m going to be taking a break from writing for Mind of MrGseff. When I return; I cannot say, though I will explain myself.

I started this blog almost 4 years ago simply because I enjoyed writing essays for Media Studies during my time in sixth form, I decided that I would start writing my opinion on things outside of school and start publishing them online, originally it was made to help those doing Media Studies in AS and A level media as a source that was reliable but not too academic to the point of being boring.

I like to think I succeeded in that.

As the years went on, I decided that writing was something I wanted to do as a full time job, this meant putting more work into this blog in order to increase my chances of writing what I like but on a more professional level where I could network with others.

I can tell you, I have succeeded at that too.

I started looking for voluntary writing jobs that could be considered professional writing jobs and one of the job posts that jumped out at me was one for a company called GamerTime. They only asked for a few articles a week and when speaking to the owner; he was very understanding of the fact I’m still a student with many other responsibilities meaning I can’t write every day. He also gave me the freedom to write about whatever I could think of that was interesting, including news and editorial pieces.

We spoke for an hour before he told me I could start, I was ecstatic about the news; drinks were had in celebration. Then I realised something; if I was going to write for GamerTime, write a dissertation on Stoytelling and Narrative in video games, write a script for a 30 minute film and also write a report for a Research & Development module, all whilst working part time as a bartender in a local pub; I would have to let something go, and I have decided that it would have to be this blog.

Though I won’t abandon this blog, it will still be available for all to read my articles of the past, and who knows; I may return to this blog after University to continue spreading my work all over the internet like some delicious Philadelphia cheese.

So for now, thank you for viewing all of the things I have written; both the good and the bad. If you need me, I will be at GamerTime doing my best rants and babbles there instead.

I believe that app stores such as the Apple Store and Google Play stores are giant cesspools, most of what you find on there will be cheap knock offs of existing games in order to make a quick bit of cash, or mind numbly dull and terrible tap-a-thon titles; but it seems a Smartphone game can be released that’s so infuriating that even the game’s creator decides to pull it from the app store.

Image from thesource.com

If you can’t tell what I’m talking about yet then why haven’t you looked at the title of this article? It pretty much tells you, failing that I’ll be nice enough to let you know; I am talking about ‘Flappy bird’.

Flappy bird was actually on the app store long before it reached its peak popularity but was discovered over Christmas, which is when most apps become popular due to the fact all the boys and girls are given tablets and smart phones by jolly old Santa Claus.

So Flappy Bird took off… like a bird! (sorry) It went from being almost unknown to an app phenomenon overnight. Soon everyone knew what Flappy bird was, and if you didn’t then you were clearly out of touch with modern society or took the elaborate life decision to spend your life under a rock, on the moon or in Peckham.

In fact it’s popularity could be seen everywhere, I even noticed its popularity when I went to a lecture at my University and noticed that in the dark room of the lecture hall, everybody around me was looking down at their phones and tablet indulging themselves on the Flappy phenomenon.

I asked people what Flappy Bird was like instead of downloading it myself and trying it out because to me it was a trend and I’d be damned if I was going to get myself absorbed into another one of those. The reactions I received from people ranged from a high ranking “Yeah, it’s alright” to a less than friendly “It’s shit, mate, don’t bother”.

The strange thing was even those who hated wouldn’t stop playing it, in fact I had one friend telling me how much they hated the game WHILST they were playing it, and afterwards they continued to play it for another 20 minutes (I know some dull people).

I saw Flappy Bird as some incredibly inferior, smart phone equivalent of Dark Souls. Ok, it’s nothing LIKE Dark Souls, but people’s attitude towards its difficulty was. They would hate how difficult it was but there was no chance that they were going to give up and when they reached a high score they were happy with, they would enter a state of euphoria and happiness similar to the effect of hard drugs (don’t do drugs).

Then suddenly, the happy (or should I say Flappy? No? Ok.) times were gone. People were quite verbal about their hatred of Flappy Bird by posting complaints on everyone’s favourite hate vent; the internet (it’s my vent too!). Sadly the creator of Flappy Bird didn’t take the insults and hatred towards his game very well and decided that if that was the case then nobody could play it. He announced one day that he would remove the game from app stores and then the next day he did exactly that. In other words, he pulled a ‘Phil Fish’ by exclaiming that he ‘can’t take it anymore’.

Sadly nobody in the world knew what IT was.

Perhaps getting a tasty $50,000 a day from advertising on Flappy Bird was something he realised he didn’t want, or it could have been the fame that comes with creating anything moderately popular on the internet, or maybe it was us. Yes, us. The consumers who reacted negatively because a free game was difficult or not our cup of tea even though it had a clever video game mechanic and was an interesting take on the old ‘helicopter game’.

Though it could also be the fact that even the creator got fed up of everyone around him playing Flappy Bird…

I thought I would take a break with the usual articles I make to advertise my other work (don’t hate me), this isn’t me selling out, its more for just getting more of my work to you; the viewer.

Before I went home for the summer, I filmed a 3 part internet series with my friends at “A Weird Kind of Rodeo”. The First episode (which can be viewed HERE) has been out for a few months and has had a few views and a positive response, so that’s always nice. Now I thought I would do a little post on here to celebrate the release of the second episode which signifies the start of the new year of University for us at AWKOR. So before I ramble on too much, here’s the new episode:

I’ll probably write an article later on in the year on my experiences with AWKOR, probably when it’s our 1 year anniversary (sometime in October).

Until then, I should have another article prepared for you by next week.

Foreword: This was written a few days ago as an assignment for my Media Studies A2 course, I thought being that it is partially related to the other articles I write for this site that I would upload it. As this was something I was assigned and not something I feel passionate about it has a different feel to the other articles I have written, still enjoy and give it a look.

Christopher Nolan’s sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins was released in 2008 and became the highest grossing film of that year, the film was The Dark Knight.

For a film to gain more than $1 billion in worldwide box office is very impressive, for a film to get box office results like this would mean the company would have to put a large sum of the film’s budget into marketing and distributing the film.

Warner Brothers used various forms of marketing for The Dark Knight, they used traditional forms of marketing for the film, which they tend to use for other films.

Warner Brothers also used forms of viral marketing and they would also have marketing help from fans of the Batman series due to previous films and the on-going comic book series.

The first sign of The Dark Knight was shown as promotional trailers for the screening of I am Legend. The bank robbery scene was previewed on special IMAX screenings of I am Legend and a promotional short trailer was shown on the non-IMAX screenings.

Warner Brothers released a special trailer of The Dark Knight with Blu-Ray copies of Batman Begins, an animated film was released by Warner Brothers in 2008 entitled Batman: Gotham Knight, the film was used to bridge events after the end of Batman Begins to the beginning of The Dark Knight. The film featured six original stories.

To gain the attention of a younger audience a rollercoaster was opened in the Six Flags Theme Park for the Dark Knight’s release, the ride simulated being stalked by the Joker.

The toy company Matel released action figures and other toys such as costumes and board games for commercial distribution in June 2008.

For Viral marketing Warner Brothers integrated adverts for the Dark Knight into pre-existing social networking sites such as Facebook to increase brand awareness.

Viral adverts came in the form of Flash games, eBooks, software and other forms of media such as images and text.

After the death of Heath Ledger shortly after the film had finished, Warner Brothers adjusted promotional focus onto the Joker character.

A puzzle was placed on Dark Knight’s site whysoserious.com and whysoserious.com/itsallpartoftheplan, the puzzles were to confuse the target audience to what could happen in the film.

Warner Brothers also set an anti-piracy campaign to prevent online piracy of the film, this involved tracking anyone who obtained an early copy of the film. Sadly a pirated copy of the film was uploaded to Pirate Bay 38 hours after the film’s premiere.

In the United States, Warner Brothers released the Dark Knight to 4366 theatres, this broke the previous record which was set by 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End. The theatre number included 94 IMAX theatres.

The film’s opening weekend was so successful that the IMAX theatres were sold out for the opening weekend.

On its premiere The Dark Knight made $67 million beating the previous record held by Spiderman 3 with $59 million.

Warner Brothers re-released the Dark Knight it 2009 to bring back the film’s popularity in order for the film to win an Oscar.

With home release in the UK the film had combined sales of 513,000 units sold on the day of release, 21% of the units were blu ray discs.